


getting good at getting by

by wastrelwoods



Series: bad things happen bingo [4]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Blood and Injury, ENOUGH injured juno its time for injured peter, Gay/Lesbian Solidarity!, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Rita got an icecream date but lucky for nureyev he just gets Shot, Team Bonding, son boy allowed, welcome to the outer rim! shit sucks here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:55:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22820590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastrelwoods/pseuds/wastrelwoods
Summary: Buddy leads them back into the city proper and breathes a little easier as the blaster fire gradually comes to a halt. Ransom keeps pace with her, but his footfalls are less silent than before, and more and more unsteady as time goes on. It’s scarcely a few minutes since they began the second leg of their great escape when she looks back to see him propped against a wall in the shadow of an overhanging roof, his face quite bloodless and one silk shirtsleeve turning rapidly and visibly the opposite.The one of Buddy’s eyes in the half of her face she can move for trying goes wide. “You got hit,” she says, and it comes out unexpectedly scolding.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko & Peter Nureyev, background juno/peter and buddy/vespa - Relationship
Series: bad things happen bingo [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1281491
Comments: 26
Kudos: 267





	getting good at getting by

**Author's Note:**

> i am once again asking for someone to give peter nureyev a home 2k20!! and if that means giving him a master thief mom who is slightly baffled by the 37-year-old feral rat who only tells lies newly under her care so BE it
> 
> (references spoilers up through juno steel and the tools of rust, part 2)

The most foolproof plan, Buddy has always thought, is only as good as its exit strategy. After all, there’s precious little point getting caught up in the details of how to get in and get what you want if you can’t get back out again afterward. For the thief, a good exit strategy is what marks the distinction between a short career and a long one. 

And timing, of course. Good timing is valuable however you come by it. 

Which is to say, Buddy’s plans usually go off much better than this. There are always complications, of course, always unforeseen circumstances that require quickly improvised solutions. But when Buddy sends her people, her family, into trouble for a worthy cause, she expects them all to know exactly how to get out in one piece. 

It’s maddening, of course, that their coming was anticipated this time around. That their quarry was smuggled away under their noses and by the time anyone took notice it was entirely too late to salvage the mission. Buddy saw the way the frustration impacted each member of her crew in turn, urging them all that single step closer to desperation. Nothing for it but to regroup and try again. 

The trouble is, while her exit strategy was devised well in advance, it failed to account for the bounty hunters. 

“They’re gaining on us!” Vespa’s voice is ragged and she sounds like she’s forcing the words out through gritted teeth. Buddy glances over her shoulder to confirm, but with the cybernetic half her vision blurring and flickering under the strain, it’s difficult to say. 

A hundred yards more, and they’ll be past the last gate. Safely out of the city, and out of Vishnu’s orbit after that. They only have to make it as far as the car, and she trusts both the vehicle and its driver implicitly to handle things from there. “Nearly there, darling.”

“Buddy, we’re not gonna make it,” Vespa snaps, a cornered animal, so assured in their imminent destruction that Buddy feels her pulse spike in sympathetic terror. 

“Just keep running,” she answers, instead. Vespa doesn’t much care for reassurances, and Buddy would feel a little dishonest offering them, under the circumstances.

At least one of their pursuers is chasing them across the rooftops, now, leaping from building to building with an enviable agility. It makes the angle of their fire that much more difficult to dodge. “Rita,” Juno wheezes, just behind her and a little to the right. “Rita, how long can you hold the gate?” 

Her voice crackles to life through the comms, higher and sharper with tension. “You got fifteen seconds, boss!” 

The only one who isn’t trembling and red-faced with the exertion is Ransom, whose face is shining with sweat but who runs almost silently, his footfalls so light that Buddy could nearly forget he’s there. 

Around the corner. Down the last alleyway, dodging blaster fire all the way and keeping their eyes locked on the flickering pylons of the gate and the RUBY 7 just beyond. 

With the thunder of her running feet echoing in her own head, Buddy finds herself thinking, quite without meaning to, of the bridges over Balder. Of the rushing wind in her ears, the exhilaration and the freedom and the way it only took half an instant to fall to pieces around her.

Her eyes flicker back to Vespa, and for just one instant Buddy feels her feet falter. 

“ _Captain,_ ” someone barks, urgently, Ransom perhaps, and then she’s knocked unceremoniously to the ground with enough speed and force to sprain at least one wrist catching her fall. 

When she looks up again, the pylons are flickering, humming to life, buzzing like angry hornet drones as the barrier falls back into place and the gate closes, leaving her trapped on the wrong side. Buddy curses, clamoring to her hands and knees and meeting Vespa’s wide, red-rimmed eyes through the distorted curtain of electric light. 

Her head spins, and her breath comes heavy and sharp through overworked lungs, but she can make out the forms of her Vespa, Juno, Jet, Rita, the car, all safe and sound beyond the barrier. The hand still clutching at her shoulder must be Ransom’s, from the unsteady tremor of his fingers and the near-silent exhortation of pain he lets slip. Buddy tears her eyes away from Vespa and finds him kneeling beside her, ashen and grim-faced. 

“Well,” she manages, after a moment. “I suppose that’s us shit out of luck, Ransom.” 

He cracks a slightly glassy smile, and tries to offer her a hand up while wavering dangerously on his feet. Buddy waves him away and grimaces, turning back to their fast-approaching pursuers. “Fight or run?” she asks, under her breath. 

One of Ransom’s hands is clutching at his opposite shoulder, and if Vespa was a cornered animal before the nameless thief is nearly her mirror, his dark hair matted to his forehead with sweat and his posture settling into a defensive half-crouch. “Run, I think,” he says, after a moment, jaw clenched. 

Buddy nods, and glances back through the gate again. “Go on, all of you, back to the ship. Don’t wait up,” she shouts, injecting as much bravado into her hoarse voice as she can muster. “We’ll be in touch!” she promises, and motions for Ransom to follow as she ducks around the next corner and the chase begins anew. 

She can’t quite bring herself to look Vespa in the face again before she turns away, but she feels the sharp ache of guilt in her chest all the same. 

With only two, it is easier to stay out of sight, and to move silently. Buddy leads them back into the city proper and breathes a little easier as the blaster fire gradually comes to a halt. Ransom keeps pace with her, but his footfalls are less silent than before, and more and more unsteady as time goes on. It’s scarcely a few minutes since they began the second leg of their great escape when she looks back to see him propped against a wall in the shadow of an overhanging roof, his face quite bloodless and one silk shirtsleeve turning rapidly and visibly the opposite. 

The one of Buddy’s eyes in the half of her face she can move for trying goes wide. “You got hit,” she says, and it comes out unexpectedly scolding. 

“I’m fine,” he murmurs, steely stubbornness in his soft voice. “I just...need a moment--”

“Really now, darling, I think you’re operating under some flawed assumptions about how blaster wounds work.”

“I’m fine,” he says again, sharper and sounding even less like he genuinely believes it. 

“Ransom,” she tells him, firmly, and sighs. “We’ll take a rest.” 

“There’s no need to stop on my account--”

“Who said anything about stopping on your account? I’m positively winded.” She sits heavily on an upturned crate beneath the same overhand. He watches, still leaning heavily on the wall, staring with furrowed brows like he’s trying to calculate exactly what she means. Buddy stares right back. “When did it happen?”

His eyes slide slowly shut, and he grimaces. “Oh, I couldn't say exactly wh--”

“Pete,” she chides.

“I…” He pauses. “At the gate,” he admits, nearly under his breath. “It was foolish, I know, but I saw the one on the rooftop take aim and…” Ransom’s fingers twitch where they rest against the mortarless bricks of the wall. “I’m afraid I acted quite without thinking.” 

Buddy doesn’t startle, but its a near thing. She looks Ransom over, head to toe, and allows the thought to trickle in by degrees. Nice and slowly, so it doesn’t overwhelm her. It’s one thing to draft up a few nice verbal promises and maybe a contract or two and talk about thinking of the team as a kind of oddball family, and quite another to hear a man quietly admit to taking a laser for you. 

Ransom winces like he takes her silence for condemnation. “My apologies,” he says, “It was rash of me, and probably cost the both of us our escape--”

“Thank you, darling,” she tells him, briskly, the instant she feels her voice is steady enough. “As far as I’m concerned, you made the right call. After all, we’re both still breathing, aren’t we?” 

A whisper of a shaky laugh leaves Ransom, and his fingers clutch tighter at his blood-soaked shoulder before he nods, sharply. “Yes, Captain.” 

She narrows her organic eye. “You’re about to faint on me, aren’t you, Ransom.” 

“I’m afraid so, Captain,” he admits. “Apologies f--for the inconvenience.” 

The words are scarcely out of his mouth before the rest of the color leaves his face, and his spindly legs fold under him like nothing so much as splintering toothpicks. Buddy can’t quite reach him in time to stop his fall, only break it before his head knocks into the bricks. She sighs, and lowers the both of them gently to the ground, the nameless thief slumped against her. 

He’s not particularly heavy, really, but the trouble is that Buddy’s fallen out of practice with swinging damsels and damoiseaux over her shoulders in recent years. That sort of thing was all well and good fifteen years ago, but between her aging joints and intermittent bouts of chronic radiation sickness keeping her dizzy and off-balance she’s rather pinned down at the moment. What she can manage is to shift his weight enough to tear a decent strip from the hem of her skirt and do a little something to see to that shoulder. 

Vespa always was better at field medicine. Buddy’s fingers aren’t delicate enough to get the knack of it, and they fumble on the knots. The wound bleeds through too quickly for her liking. Ransom’s skin is hot and clammy all at once, and his pulse is quick and shallow when she finally manages to get the measure of it. 

She looks up, once, to see the familiar frame of one of the bounty hunters shouldering their way through the crowded street, and curses under her breath, keeping still as she can in the shadow of the overhang. 

In the end, that’s what settles it. Buddy swallows, and brushes the hair from Ransom’s forehead, patting at his slack face until he finally stirs, eyes unfocused and half-lidded. 

“Mmh?” 

“We can’t stay here, darling,” she tells him, leaning in close. “Rest later, move now. Can you stand?” 

Ransom frowns, calculating the possibility. “I...couldn’t say.” 

“Well, give it the old college try for me, won’t you?” Buddy tells him, more an order than a question, bracing one hand against the wall and slinging his undamaged shoulder across her own. “Come on, Pete, heave-ho.” 

He grits his teeth around an agonized groan as they shift upright by slow degrees, but they manage it nonetheless. The best thing for it seems to be to move propped against one another, pressed side to side, rather like a potato-sack race.

It’s been years since Buddy saw this ring of the Outer Rim, systems torn to scrap by generations of war and rebellion and one autocracy after another promising to manage the chaos and failing spectacularly by turns. Vishnu’s capital city is more favela than not these days, even here, practically under the nose of the presidential palace. Scrap-metal shelters recycled from decommissioned haulers and tents built up into semipermanent half-houses. She’s never been before, and if she had the city plan would be completely unrecognizable by now. But the thieves cant she sees scrawled across the repurposed sheet steel walls is familiar enough. She follows the signs. 

They find the door before her legs fail her entirely, and Buddy breathes a sigh of temporary relief, rapping on the wall in the old pattern, and digging a few creds out of her pocket to slide through the gap. 

“Bed for the night?” she asks, “We can pay.”

A slot in the door slides to, and a pair of wary eyes peer out through it. “I don’t recognize you,” a hoarse voice rattles. 

“Just passing through on the way out of town, darling,” Buddy explains. “In a bit of trouble, but we won’t drag it in with us and we won’t stay more than a night.” 

Their eyes dart to Ransom, half-conscious beside her, head lolling against Buddy’s shoulder, and narrow. “That one have a debtor’s tag?” 

Buddy purses her lips in distaste. “No.”

“Might need one soon,” they warn. “Doctors here don’t come free.” 

“I’m taking care of him,” she says, sharply, and takes a moment to compose herself, offers them a thin smile. “Your suggestion is appreciated, but unnecessary.”

The nervous eyes flicker back and forth again for a moment, and the slot closes again before the door slides open in its place. The host steps aside, gesturing the pair of them into the small, dimly lit safehouse. They smile, or possibly they grimace, one prominent tooth missing and another chipped in half. “What do I call you, then?” 

Buddy looks to her thief, who doesn’t register the question, his face still drawn and pale with the focus of remaining upright. She hums quietly. Her own name carries some small notoriety in certain circles, which could needlessly complicate matters. But there are other solutions. “Ransom,” she offers, tersely. “The family name’s Ransom. All right, Pete?” 

He shudders a little forcefully, leans closer into her side and nods, meeker than she’s grown to expect from him. 

“Well. I’m Fenya,” they offer in return, then clear their throat. “Pleasure doing business with you, Ms. Ransom. Room’s two hundred creds. I got food if you make it two hundred fifty.” 

“Oh, board won’t be necessary,” she dismisses out of hand. Solid food’s not really on the cards for Buddy these days, and prices are steeper than they used to be. Sign of the changing times. “Just the room, dear.” 

Fenya cocks their head like they’re drafting up a list of burning questions, but seems contented to leave them be for the moment. They brush past Buddy to a loose panel of the back wall, fiddling with a few bolts until one moves with a sharp click and swings the whole panel ajar. Time was a safe room was a little better hidden, but Buddy supposes beggars can’t be choosers. “Expecting anyone else?” They ask, businesslike, while Buddy counts out the creds and supplements the deficit with one of her sets of earrings. “Or just you and your son?” 

Buddy nearly loses track of her count, takes a moment to stop and blink and hold back a startled laugh. Still, it would the rude to begrudge the host their easy misunderstanding. She pays up and smiles. “Oh, I believe we’re on our own for the moment,” she demurs. “Thank you, Fenya.” 

Still propped against her, Ransom mumbles something soft and inarticulate into her collarbone, and half-falls more than walks into the back room. Buddy maneuvers him onto one of the pallets, and notes the blood still seeping sluggishly through her makeshift bandaging and the red crusting to her fingers, and bites back a sigh. 

She finds her comms, hesitates a moment before setting the frequency. Ransom watches her with unfocused eyes, his breath coming shallow and pained. 

It takes Jet a fraction of an instant to pick up. “Buddy. You missed the rendezvous. No one has heard from you for hours.” 

“I’m sorry, darling,” she says, settling into a crouch with one wall at her back. “There were complications, I’m sure you heard.” 

“Juno informed me that the Thief is also with you, and that he was injured.”

“He’s got a sharp eye,” Buddy confirms. “I almost didn’t notice myself. Speaking of, you couldn’t patch me through to Vespa, could you?” 

Jet is quiet for a moment. “When will we be able to retrieve the two of you?” 

Buddy glances sidelong at Ransom. There’s hair falling over his face again, unkempt and grey-streaked. She reaches out to push it back, gently. “Hard to say,” she admits. “We’ll take it as it comes, alright? Worry about tomorrow when it’s tomorrow.” 

From the quality of Jet’s silence, the answer dissatisfies him. Buddy is more than familiar with the qualities of his silences. But she’s already apologized once, and there’s precious little more to say than that. 

“I will put you through to Vespa,” he says, at last, and she breathes out a small sigh of relief. 

She’s lost a little of the same familiarity with Vespa’s silences over time and distance and imperfect memory, is still trying to relearn them with every passing hour of their second chance, but this one would be difficult to misinterpret. “I thought you were dead,” she rasps, accusingly. 

“Have a little faith in me, love,” Buddy says, endeavoring to keep her voice under control. “I’m like a bad penny, I always turn up again eventually.” 

“ _Bud_ ,” Vespa chokes.

“Vespa, please, another time,” she manages, shutting her eyes, fighting a rising surge of vertigo. “Be a doll and help me keep Ransom alive, will you?” 

“The kid?” She heaves an impatient groan, evidently having trouble shifting her focus. “Fine, I guess. How about you? You hurt?” 

“Perfectly alright.” 

“I don’t believe _that_ for a second, Bud, you always say that but you never mean--”

“A little dizzy,” Buddy admits. “Rather exhausted, and I’m afraid I left my medication back on the ship so I’m sure in a few hours I’ll be quite nauseous too. I appreciate your concern, darling, really I do, but there’s nothing much to be done about me but lie low and manage. Does that satisfy your question?”

Her next silence is also distantly familiar, though it’s sharpened with age. Buddy can nearly picture the scowl on her face. “What’s wrong with the kid?” 

Buddy sets the comms to speaker, and sets it down a little way away. “Blaster shot to the shoulder,” she says briskly. “Clean through, I think.” 

Ransom’s distressingly silent while Vespa leads her through the process of cleaning and wrapping the wound properly. Unconscious, for some of the time, she thinks, but by the time she’s finished tearing up the new bandages he starts to stir again, grasping at her wrist and making a halfhearted effort to flinch away, clawing under the pallet for the knife he usually keeps under his pillow. 

“Stop that, it’s only me,” she scolds, holding him down. “Honestly, Pete.” 

He mumbles, settling again, and Buddy ties off the last of the bandages. “Right. Anything else, Vespa?”

There’s a thoughtful hum from the other end of the line. “Keep an eye out for infection. Probably inevitable, actually, but keep me updated when he starts getting feverish anyway, yeah?”

“I’m fine,” Ransom groans, audibly, with his face pressed into the pallet and his glasses hanging half off at a skewed angle. “I don’t get sick.”

Vespa takes this pronouncement with a beat of silence and a quiet snort. “Dumbass.” 

“Your confidence is admirable, Pete,” Buddy drawls, throwing a blanket over his sprawled form and ending the call before it can deplete her comms battery any further. “Now go to sleep.”

From this angle she can barely see Ransom’s lips quirk up in a tiny lopsided smile. “Yes, Mag,” he mumbles softly. 

Halfway through unfolding the other blanket, Buddy blinks. She turns back to the thief, a question on her lips, but his face is already slack with sleep. 

Ah well. Another time, then. 

Nausea keeps her awake long into the night, stomach churning when she rests too long in one position. After a few vain attempts to toss and turn and find a respite, she abandons the pallet entirely and sits, knees tucked in to her chest, back against the wall. She used to meditate with Jet, while he battled the worst of the withdrawal, moving through a regular routine of breathing exercises and slow stretches, practicing mindfulness and patience and absolute control over the body. Dreadfully boring stuff, Buddy always felt, to sit silently with one’s own restless thoughts, but it was always more about the company anyway. 

Buddy breathes in, allows her worries to bubble gradually to the surface, and considers them. A pang of desperate terror at the memory of the gate cutting her off from escape and from Vespa. A slower, sickening worry at the image of Ransom’s blood drying dark on her hands. Perhaps a little guilt, for not anticipating and preventing his injury in the first place. For asking too much of him, far too much of any of them, to be her partners in this desperate crusade for a mark that may turn out to be nothing more than a myth.

She breathes out, and dismisses what worries she can. Chooses to trust to hope, the same way she trusts Fenya to protect their reputation over the temptation to earn a little extra coin by turning them in on a whim. The way she trusts every member of her crew to know the risks and make their own decisions, to stay or to leave. The way she trusts that she _will_ see Vespa again, come hell or high water.

It’s the final thought that carries her off to sleep at last. Buddy dreams of a rare hint of a smile on her worn, angular face, beautiful in the last moment of dusk, caught between light and shadow. 

She wakes to see Ransom flushed and shivering, blankets kicked away in the night. 

“ _Mag_ , stoppit,” he grumbles, as she leans down to tuck him in again, when she rests a hand against his forehead and feels the sickly heat of his skin. His eyes are brighter even than usual, glazed and narrowed in pain. “Hurts.” 

The same unfamiliar name again. Buddy wonders who he’s mistaken her for despite knowing it’s hardly her business to pry. “Well, darling, I expect it would,” she answers firmly, to cover the sensation of her heart in her throat. “I’ve been shot before, you know, it’s no walk in the park.” 

“Ah.” Ransom seems to consider this for a moment, propping himself upright on one elbow, examining his bandaged shoulder. He looks at Buddy a little sideways, and blinks. “Captain, I-- I’m afraid I might be coming down with something,” he says, apologetically, the words slurring clumsily in his unsteady voice. 

Buddy sighs, and opts not to roll her eyes. “Yes, I think you just might,” she agrees, flatly. 

“Do you…” he focuses his gaze on her, apparently with no small effort. “Is there any water?” 

“I’ll see what I can do, darling,” she promises. “Give me a moment.” 

Fenya flinches when she steps back into the house proper, though she rapped on the panel first to give some semblance of a proper warning. They eye her warily from the corner of the room that most resembles a kitchen, picking at a portion of rehydrated rice. 

“Don’t suppose you know where a lady might find a decent course of antibiotics in this city,” Buddy prods, casually. “The debt-free option, if you can recommend it.” 

Their host shovels a mouthful of the rice and chews, looking unsubtly over Buddy’s shoulder at the bundle of blankets piled on Ransom’s pallet. “No luck,” they say, swallowing, and focus their stare on the torn hem of Buddy’s overskirt. “You don’t look the type to have a spare million laying around.”

Buddy sets her jaw. “Painkillers, then?”

They swallow another mouthful of the rice, looking contrite. “Listen, we used to have an outside source, and a pretty reliable smuggler to the whole system,” they explain. “But that was a long time ago. Gotta go through the Board for everything now, and you gotta pay through the nose. It’s the same on Brahma and Shiva, too.” 

Lifting a canteen from the counter, Buddy holds back a frustrated sigh. “Well. That is unfortunate.” She taps one fingernail against the side, feeling the bitterness catch in her throat and then swallowing it down again. “Thank you, Fenya,” she says again. It’s the least she can do, under the circumstances. 

They jerk their head in an uneasy nod, like they mean to offer an apology but know it would ring hollow. 

Ransom is still propped on his uninjured arm when she returns, his glassy eyes dark and his expression disquieted in a way that tells her in an instant how much he’s overheard. 

He’s silent and grim-faced while she tugs aside his collar to unwrap the bandages. The skin around his laser burn is hot and tight and shiny red, like it might start to bleeding sluggishly again if pressed. Buddy’s stomach was already churning, but she feels it twist, and sighs as she depressurizes the lid of the canteen and washes the wound again. “Well, darling?” she says, quietly, “What do you think, hm?” 

She feels Ransom tremble. He sets his jaw and looks past her to the rusted tiling of the far wall. “We ought to keep moving,” he answers. “It’s risky, lying low too long in one place.” 

“Yes.” Buddy says it plainly but not gladly. A fact. “It is.” 

“Only, I worry--” Ransom winces as she scrubs dried blood from the divot of his collarbone. “It might be wiser to...to go our separate ways, and meet back at the ship.” 

Buddy raises the brow on the unburnt half of her face. “Really? And why is that?”

The thief hesitates, and glances back to her a little guiltily. “I...Captain Aurinko, you know I would be a severe hindrance to you, in this condition. You could make much better headway on your own, and I’m quite capable of taking care of myself--”

Buddy does a very admirable job, she thinks, of not tugging too sharply at the dressings on his wound as she rebandages his shoulder. Ransom grimaces, a little, but she hopes it’s more out of discomfort than any severe pain. “I see,” she says, flatly. “Well, Pete, I’ll take that argument into consideration.”

“We aren’t...leaving now?” 

Buddy stares at him, swaying a little with the effort of keeping upright, cheeks flushed and face ashen, and clicks her tongue. “Give me the chance to scrape together more than half a plan and I’ll be ready and raring to go,” she fibs. “Lie back down before you fall down, dear, if it’s not too much trouble.” 

He narrows his eyes. “You aren’t listening to me,” he accuses.

She offers him the rest of the canteen, supports his head while he drinks. “No, I suppose I’m not,” Buddy murmurs, apologetically. “Allow an old businesswoman her professional quirks, won’t you, Pete? I don’t like to make my people fend for themselves, if I can help it.” Ransom makes a disgruntled noise, chokes up a little of the water in his haste to get a word in edgewise, and Buddy clears her throat. “Alright, then,” she says, firmly. “I can see that doesn’t satisfy you. Consider it a repayment for services rendered. If you like.” 

That quiets him. Ransom looks up at her, quizzically. His silver-streaked hair is unkempt and slightly greasy, and his cracked lips are slightly parted in an unspoken inquiry. 

It takes Buddy a moment to find the words. “It would be very poor thanks to abandon you now when you were injured on my command, Ransom.”

He cracks a thin, pained smile. “If we can’t have a little honor among thieves, what is the world coming to?”

“Exactly, dear.” 

“Well,” Ransom manages, a little hoarsely. “I suppose it’s your decision, Captain.” 

He falls back into a half-doze quickly, apparently despite himself, curled in around his immobilized arm and shivering in small fits. Buddy lets the confident smile drop from her face, and calls Jet again. 

He picks up on the second blip this time, with a distant, echoing sound of scattering nuts and bolts that indicates he’s been methodically disassembling one of the ship’s more vital systems in her absence. “Buddy. Are you unwell?” 

Buddy pinches at the bridge of her nose. “I’ve had better weeks, darling, but I’ve certainly had worse.” 

There’s a murmur too muffled to make out, from a familiar second voice, and Jet exhales, quietly. “I have been told to ask after the Thief as well,” he adds, momentarily. 

“Yes, well, that is rather the question of the hour. Juno, I’m afraid I can’t spare any good news for you at the moment,” she says, pitching her voice a little louder to reach Jet’s companion in the background. “Would you believe there’s no medical attention to be had planetside without going through the local branch of the Board of Fresh Starts?” 

She can make out the distant sound of Juno cursing, and runs her fingers through her hair with a sigh. “You can see the shape of the problem, hm?” 

Jet hums, quietly. “He is in no condition to evacuate the city with you, and you will not leave him behind.” 

“I’m afraid we’ll need to be extracted, darling.” Buddy allows the clipped quality of her tone to communicate the relevant urgency. “Can you manage it?”

There’s a long beat of silence. Buddy holds her breath until her head spins, and taps the heel of her boot against the floor in a terse, trochaic tempo. 

“There will be increased security on nearly every entrypoint after our last infiltration,” Jet reasons, matter-of-factly, but she can hear the slightly agitated timbre in his low voice. “And, of course, a team of hired gunmen with a bounty on everyone who was previously spotted at the presidential palace. I can only guarantee Rita or myself would be able to undertake this mission with any reasonable degree of success.” 

Buddy taps her heel again, twice, and clears her throat. “Understood.” 

“Our chances will likewise be higher the longer we can afford to wait for security to wane.” 

Ransom shifts in his sleep, dampening an involuntary moan of pain into the straw pallet, his face drawn and tense. Buddy shuts her eye. “Of course. Well, supposing time is a rather important consideration on our end, too, how long do you think you could give us?” 

Jet is silent, and Buddy misses the reassurance of his physical presence with a fervor that shocks her. “I will be there by nightfall,” he promises. “Eleven hours of standard galactic time from now. Will this suffice?” 

“I suppose it will have to either way, won’t it?” Buddy sighs. “Thank you, darling. I know this was hardly the plan.” 

There’s a brief scuffle at the other end of the line, after which Juno’s voice joins in, crisper and clearer than before. “I want to talk to Ransom.” 

“I’m afraid he’s resting, darling.”

“Please,” Juno entreats, “Just...for a second.” 

Buddy worries her lip between her teeth. The details of the history between the nameless thief and Juno are as much a mystery to her as anyone else, but it’s painfully clear that there is a history to speak of nonetheless. “Let me see if I can bring him around,” she grants.

When she grasps at Ransom’s uninjured shoulder, though, and shakes him into stirring, she can tell at a glance that it’s a lost cause. The flush across his cheeks is brighter now, and his eyes are distant and hazy. His hand comes up to clutch at her sleeve, quick as a flash, fingers clammy and stiff. “Pete…” she sighs.

“ _Mag,_ ” he pants, sounding ragged and miserable and confused. “What happened? Where are we--” 

“I’m sorry,” she says over the line, short and clipped. “He was rather more lucid earlier, Juno, I can pass on a message the next time I have an opportunity--”

“What did he call you?” Juno interrupts, and from the sawtooth rasp of his voice Buddy can’t determine if it’s the moniker itself or the fact that Ransom is so incoherent with fever in the first place that has him sounding so stricken. “Fuck, nevermind. Shit. It’s fine. Sorry I asked.”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t say,” she answers. “I don’t mean to pry, darling, but you wouldn’t happen to know what he means--”

“Like you just said,” Juno replies, a little too quickly and a little too harshly. “I couldn’t tell you. Just...no clue.” 

“Well.” Buddy pats at Ransom’s hand. “I’ll keep my nose out of it, then.” 

Juno makes a distant, noncommittal grunt which she recognizes as his own unique way of conveying thanks. “Hey, Buddy? Bring the idiot back in one piece, yeah?” 

“I’ll do my very utmost, Juno,” she promises. “Now be a doll and give Jet back his comms, would you?” 

She ends the call without precisely waiting for a response. Ransom makes a quiet little sound at the back of his throat, and tightens his grip on her wrist. “Mag, please, you have to listen to me, we can’t--”

Buddy shushes him, bracing her other hand against his forehead and wincing at the shocking heat of his skin. “Easy, Pete, easy. What’s the trouble?”

“We have to stop it,” he asserts, clinging to her like his life depends on it, spine bowing with the effort of trying to force himself upright. “It’s going to fall, we can’t let it _fall_ , it’s not right--”

Buddy feels a cold shiver race up her spine. “I’m afraid I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Pete.” 

Ransom’s face falls, and he twists like he’s trying to pull away. “You lied to me,” he says, softer, sounding gutted. 

The delirious conviction of his accusation is so strong that for a moment the words make an answering shame burn hot in her stomach. She tugs her arm away, and his weakened grip releases her without a fight. 

Something else crumples in Ransom’s expression, and his jerky, panicked movements stop quite suddenly. “I _killed_ you,” he breathes, quietly horrified. 

“Ransom,” Buddy says, sharply, hoping to cut him off before he can reveal anything more deeply incriminating, or worse, deeply personal. “That’s _enough_ , darling.” 

The nameless thief shudders, but he goes quiet, breath hitching sharply every few heartbeats like he can’t quite manage to pull himself back from the edge of incoherent panic. Buddy scrubs a hand across her face, wincing as the motion makes a sharp pain bloom behind her mechanical eye socket. 

Time drips by in beads of sweat and shallow, pained breaths and hours that crawl past in uncomfortable, lingering stillness. Buddy can play a waiting game. She’s had rather a lot of practice over the last few decades. Eight years in Balder Central Penitentiary, then two years under the poison sky of the Martian desert, waiting and watching and trusting to hope until her body finally gave out under the strain. Serenely patient she is not, but Buddy Aurinko knows how to loiter and act stubborn with the best of them. 

She keeps herself busy, hums snatches of old songs out of key, stretches her legs when she can and rests when the exertion makes spots start to float in her vision. Makes cold compresses and changes them out. Cleans out her blaster and changes the laser card, and inventories the rest of her weaponry. A bowie knife sheathed in the side of one boot. A trio of smoke bombs and a signal flare and a small neodymium magnet. Her favorite pair of brass knuckles, tucked in a back pocket for safekeeping. Her comms, running low on battery, one corner of the plasma screen flickering as it gradually leaches power. 

Ransom mumbles, drifting between languages and dialects both familiar and foreign to Buddy’s ear. Or he’s silent, but for the fitful rise and fall of his chest. 

He’s an odd duck, is Peter Ransom, she considers, watching him. That stalwart moral core of him and the shell of mercenary coolness he dons like armor. And he’s young, too, at least to Buddy’s eye. He can’t be more than thirty-five or forty, nearly the age she and Vespa were back on Balder, before their long separation. A master thief at the very zenith of his career, still so keen and, if certain sources are to be believed, more than a little cutthroat. But trustworthy, under the right circumstances. 

She’s already made the choice to trust him a dozen times over, naturally. Trust isn’t optional in their line of work, especially on a team like this. But she’s grateful, nonetheless, to discover that at least a portion of her initial assessment was well founded.

And, of course, Juno likes him. He had to be given a fair chance, just for that. 

The thief without a name shifts restlessly. Buddy couldn’t say if he’s sleeping or waking, but she supposes that it’s all more or less the same thing, with a fever so high. She recalls, quite suddenly, the way Jet had looked when he came back from Le Verrier with M’tendere’s body cradled small and silent in his arms, and thinks that Ransom as he is now would seem almost indistinguishably still.

It’s difficult, to watch him struggle for breath. Buddy swallows the feeling down so her words will come out steadier, and says, quite firmly. “You know, Peter, I have a very good intuition about these things, and I’m of the opinion that you’re a man who wants to live. In fact, I’m betting on it.”

It would probably be a very inspiring lecture, if he were in any condition to heed it. Buddy sighs, and presses another compress to his forehead, watching the cool water trickle down his temple. Her manner is considerably less composed when she continues, “Don’t give up on me, darling.” 

She cards her fingers through his silvering hair, and this time he stirs, leaning ever so slightly into the contact. “Mag,” he mumbles, hoarsely. 

Buddy shuts her eyes, falters, and capitulates. “I’m here, Pete,” she says. “Right here.” 

He exhales, some little sound halfway between a sigh and a gasp. “You won’t leave?”

“Just you try to shift me,” Buddy says, taken off guard by the burst of fondness that accompanies the words. “I couldn’t move if I wanted to, actually. My legs have gone to sleep, you know, I’m all pins and needles. But I don’t blame you, darling. These joints of mine could use the rest.” 

Ransom’s quiet. His fever-bright eyes flutter open, and he stares up at her for a long moment, considering. “If you’re here,” he says, eventually, resignation and curiosity mixed in his tone. “Am I dead?” 

Buddy scoffs. “Hardly.”

“Dy _ing_ , then,” he rasps. Buddy supposes she shouldn’t be surprised he can manage to be pedantic while semiconscious. 

“Not if I can help it,” she says, firmly. 

The answer doesn’t appear to satisfy him. Ransom shifts, wincing as the movement pulls at his inflamed shoulder, and continues to stare up at her with a hazy, unfocused calculation. “I suppose I always thought you’d...hate me,” he says, small. 

Buddy steels herself, and glances away. “And why is that, darling?” She aims for facetious and misses by an unconvincing mile. She has a better memory than that, can recall the sordid history Ransom has already let slip today.

“I don’t think--” he says, hesitantly, a frown creasing his colorless lips. “I worry I’m not the kind of thief you wanted me to be.” His voice is small, but heavier with unnameable emotion than she’s heard it in many weeks. Shame, perhaps, or grief. Buddy’s scarcely had the chance to observe how he wears either feeling on his face, thus far into their working relationship. “Is that ridiculous of me?” he asks, bitter, “To want to make you proud after I put a knife in your back?” 

“Oh, Pete,” she breathes, sharply. 

“I didn’t want to do it,” Ransom says, in a shattered voice. He trembles, and Buddy runs her fingers through his hair again. “I didn’t...but you wouldn’t _listen_ , and there was no time, and all those people were going to _die_ , Mag, and--” He stops to suck in a shallow breath, “I was so _angry_ at you, for lying all those years about who I was and where I came from and I…I think I did want, after all. To hurt you.” 

Buddy waits in careful, tenuous silence, adjusting the compress on his forehead. 

“Mag, please--”

She bites back a sigh, sitting up straight and dropping her hands into her lap. “I’m not going to presume to put words in the mouth of a dead man, Peter, so you can stop calling me by that name and settle down before you pull your stitches. Took me nearly an hour to get those set straight.”

Ransom grits his teeth around a groan, but doesn’t try to reach for her again. 

Buddy feels her pulse pounding in her temples, quick and sharp, and she takes a moment to breathe in and out again, slowly and deliberately. “Forgive me, darling, I don’t mean to shout.” She brushes a few strands of hair back from Ransom’s forehead, plastered there with sweat. “It’s only that I suspect if I hear any more of your secrets like this, this will be the last I ever see of you, Pete, and that would be a damned shame. I’ve grown fond of having you on my team. Despite my better judgement, possibly.”

From the dazed look on Ransom, he doesn’t quite get the picture, but he nods, tersely.

“It’s hardly my place to say it,” she continues, before she can help herself, “But I suppose, as your Captain, darling, I would consider myself...very proud indeed, for what it’s worth.”

The expression that twists his face makes him seem, for a moment, much younger than his years. “Oh.” 

Buddy feels a smile pull at the corner of her mouth. “Don’t let it go to your head, now. We can’t have it swelling up any bigger than it is already.”

Ransom is quiet and still for some time, save for a little intermittent shakiness. She assumes he’s asleep, actually, until he speaks up again. Nearly a whisper, flat with exhaustion, but more lucid than he’s been in hours. “Thank you, Captain Aurinko. For staying.” 

“Yes, well.” Buddy shifts a little, trying to shake some feeling back into her legs. “I don’t believe I ever actually thanked you for having my back yesterday. That was fine work, Pete. Above and beyond.” 

He groans, injured arm tucked in close to his side. “Any of them would have done the same,” the thief mumbles. 

“I should damn well hope not,” Buddy says, firmly. “It’s not my intention to make any of you people feel obligated to die for me. You’re on thin ice as it is, darling, I’ve made up my mind to be very cross with you the moment you’re feeling well enough.”

Ransom makes a breathy sound that might be a laugh. “I’ll just have to expire here and now,” he says, flippant. “Spare us both the lecture.” 

Buddy grits her teeth. “That’s not a very amusing joke, Ransom.”

“Nureyev,” he pronounces, in a rushed fashion, like if he stops a moment to deliberate he won’t get the word out. 

Buddy blinks, feels her cybernetic eye give a camera-shutter click of surprise. 

The thief’s eyes go incrementally wider, and he looks away with a worried pinch to his mouth. Breathes in, and out again. Buddy can practically see his pulse jump in his neck before grim determination settles over his features, to be replaced by his former mask of icy, professional blankness. “Peter Nureyev.” 

Buddy nods, slowly, quirking one eyebrow. “The nameless thief has a name after all, then?” 

He smiles a tight, humorless smile. “With a heart and a calling card to match, apparently,” he says, a little defensively. “I could hardly hope to keep you from finding this chink in my armor, too, sooner or later, I hate to waste the effort.”

“Really, Pete.” Buddy taps her heel against the floor again. “If you’re going to be so thin-skinned about a little background check--”

“No, I--” his voice is cracked with both sickness and strain. “I expect you’ll find your research much easier, now. That name has...has quite an accessible paper trail attached.” 

His face is greyer now, the vibrant flush receding and the sweat starting to pool in the hollow of his throat as the fever breaks. His eyes are rimmed in red and set with dark circles. His expression is still guarded and carefully neutral, but the dread in those eyes is easy enough to spot. 

Buddy crosses her legs at the knee. “You don’t seem very sure that you want me to know it at all, darling,” she says, carefully. “Is this secret name of yours worth all the trouble?” 

He’s quiet for a heartbeat, and then two. “I couldn’t say,” he says, in a flat voice. “I suppose you might always decide you’d rather...let me off at the next port. Part ways.” 

If Buddy were a more skeptical sort of woman, the uncertainty might really unsettle her. There’s every possibility that he’s admitting to some past as a serial murderer, an undercover agent of some intergalactic government or other, a terrorist, a war criminal, a man with unknown oceans of blood on his hands. 

But whatever he was once, this Peter Nureyev, she already knows who he is now. Buddy Aurinko trusts that man implicitly. With her life, as it happens. 

“Thank you for telling me,” she says, simply, before she’s interrupted by the chiming of her comms. “Damn. Time for that later.” 

“Buddy,” Jet’s voice fills the small room with a tinny echo. “Are you and the Thief prepared for retrieval? We will have to make our exit swift. It appears that although I was not present when you attempted to rob the palace, several of the hired gunmen are familiar with my previous work.”

Buddy stands to attention, bracing one hand against the wall as a rush of dizziness makes her stomach twist and her vision dance with spots. “Always nice to meet a fan, isn’t it, darling?” 

“This has almost never been my experience,” Jet says, sourly. “They are in pursuit. I will rendezvous with the two of you at the mouth of the next alleyway on the northwest side. Can you make it that far?” 

Buddy looks to Peter Nureyev beside her, pushing slowly upright by degrees, sweat beading on his temple with the effort. “We can certainly try, dear.” 

Jet must hear the steely resolve in her voice and comprehend a little of the fear it masks, because he stays on the line long enough to promise, with an icy calm she knows like a second heartbeat, “We will succeed in this endeavor, Buddy.” 

She holds her breath, and leans on Nureyev to push the both of them to their feet together, leaning on one another to keep upright. The thief gasps in pain at their first movement, and again with every subsequent footfall until he manages to stifle the reflex, teeth sinking into his lip hard enough to draw a bead of blood. 

Buddy leads them through the back wall of the safehouse, and tosses Fenya a diamond she’d nearly forgotten was buried at the bottom of one of her pockets. They catch it with barely a flinch, looking the pair of them over with wide eyes. “ _Dasvidaniya_ , darling,” she says with a sideways grin and the kind of wink that always played better when she still had two organic eyes. 

The winding streets are still as narrow and dark as they had been on the way in, providing better than decent cover, but it takes an agonizing eternity to push forward, leaning on one another and stumbling step by unsteady step. Buddy feels keenly exposed throughout their long retreat, even under the overcrowded eaves of the houses stacked like playing cards. 

There’s no moon but the artificial one projected onto the old prewar dome above them, a staticky silver globe and a relic of a bygone era when every terraformed planet was made a carbon copy of the original Solar model. It gives off a dim glow to outline the place where the rooftops meet the sky. 

Buddy stumbles, and Nureyev holds back another cry of pain, and they nearly manage to get the alleyway in their sights before the first blast of laser fire splits the night, scorching into the cobbles at their feet. 

“Fuck,” she hisses, and tugs her own blaster out of her sleeve, firing without stopping to look back. 

“Captain--” Nureyev begins, in a harsh whisper, and she just _knows_ from his tone he’s about to be horribly self-sacrificing. 

“I won’t hear it,” she snaps, heading him off at the pass. “We stay together, Pete.”

“Not _that_ ,” he says, “I know. I only meant--there’s better cover here.” 

He tugs faintly in the direction he proposed, and Buddy maneuvers them into an alcove where she can lean her weight against a wall and lean out to take a look before she wastes another laser. 

“Good eye,” she mumbles, and he clutches at her side for dear life. 

“First rule of thieving,” he gasps, a little lightheaded from the way his knees threaten to buckle. “Know how to disappear.” 

“Only if the second rule is to check your exits, darling,” she returns, as the blaster fire knocks into the far wall, pinning them in. 

He glances up, where the frame of a rusted fire escape disappears over the edge of the nearest rooftop, and sets his jaw. “We have options.” 

Buddy follows his gaze. Even from this angle, with both feet on the ground, the vertigo makes her shiver. “I suppose I would have classified that more as a desperate, last-ditch bid for survival, myself.” 

“Well, I believe it all amounts to the same thing eventually, Captain,” he says, a little wildly. 

Which is, naturally, the moment before the RUBY 7 crashes into the adjacent wall with a splintering crack and a merry, musical beeping. The near door slides open with a whirr, and Buddy pushes off the wall, pocketing her blaster. 

“Hello, Jet,” she sighs, gripping tight to Nureyev so he won’t sway on his feet, “Have I told you recently how much I appreciate your incredible sense of timing?” 

“You will have to thank the car,” Jet says. “I did not calculate the trajectory of that collision myself. Please come inside quickly.” 

Buddy grins, and stumbles into the backseat. The thief follows her with a quiet wheeze, more horizontal than otherwise, clutching at his injured shoulder. There’s red sluggishly spreading over his bandages where the wound’s been aggravated. 

“I assume you have a plan to lose this tail, dear,” she suggests, and Jet meets her eye in the rearview mirror as the car rises into the air. 

“Yes, but it will require both of you to fasten your seatbelts.” 

There’s a dangerous glint to his eye that she remembers from a very long time ago. Another life, practically. A more controlled, low-burning flame than the erratic wildfire it once was, but familiar all the same. Buddy steels herself for a bout of severe motion-sickness, and buckles in. 

She manages to refrain from being violently sick as the car flips and swerves in Jet’s capable hands, but only just, gripping tight to the armrests and shutting her eyes. Nureyev does the same, but she thinks she can just hear him let slip a hysterical giggle over the rushing of the wind in her ears. 

“RUBY, you are an absolute gem,” he says, with feeling, and the speaker system beeps pleasantly back at him. 

“Please do not distract the car,” Jet scolds, and takes a turn so sharp that Buddy feels her heart in her throat. Nureyev shouts through gritted teeth as the motion wrenches his shoulder. 

“Only...saying hello,” he pants, “Can’t a man say hello to his favorite getaway vehicle?” 

“Not while I am driving it.” 

“Gentlemen, please,” Buddy interrupts, when she feels steady enough to speak. “The operative word is _getaway_ , and I, for one, am rather anxious to act on it.” 

The car offers another pointed whistle and click, and Jet tilts into another steep nosedive that shocks all three of them into silence. 

Adrenaline warring with exhaustion begins to blur out her sense of time passing, and the steeplechase seems to go on for years and be over in a moment all at once. But she watches Vishnu recede into the distance with a keen sense of satisfaction nonetheless. 

The Carte Blanche rises to meet them, and the familiar soft glow is like the beam of the lighthouse made new. Jet lands them in the hangar with a smooth figure-eight turn she suspects he employs only for his own amusement. 

Buddy allows herself a last lingering moment of relief, unfastening her seatbelt, before she gets back to business. “Darling, do me a favor and help escort Mister Ransom to the medbay, would you? Ransom, you’re excused from the debrief, I hope you know, you need the rest.” 

“Buddy--” Jet says.

“Please, Jet,” she orders by way of asking. Smooths down her dress, and sighs when one nail catches the torn edge of the skirt. Braces herself against the RUBY 7 as she rises to her feet. “Family meeting when you get back, darling, in the common room. You know the drill.” 

The quality of Jet’s silence indicates he’s offering her a stern look which she is absolutely not going to dignify by meeting his eyes. Buddy tilts her chin up and waits, and he bends first. “Very well.” 

The hangar door bursts open to admit the rest of them, all in a cluster, looking as sleepless as she feels and wearing it with varying degrees of dignity. Juno almost trips over his own feet, rushing over to meet them. When his eye lights on Nureyev, propped against Jet and looking rather worse for wear but unmistakably delivered in one piece, just as promised, he stops. Opens his mouth, and closes it again, and then settles for, “Uh. Hey.” 

Buddy sees the fond smile flicker over the thief’s slightly pallid face. “Hello, Juno.” 

“Captain!” Rita waves her arms in a typically enthusiastic greeting, “You’re back! I know you told me not to worry, Mistah Jet, but I went ahead and did anyway just in case--”

“We are alright,” Jet says, speaking before Buddy can get the chance. “We were pursued, but only as far as the outer dome.” 

“Family meeting in ten minutes, darlings, you’ll hear all about it,” she echoes, and then Vespa stumbles through the doorway. 

Her eyes are lined with worry and rimmed with red, and they pierce through Buddy sharper than any blade. She looks stricken, jaw clenched tight and arms crossed firmly over her own narrow chest, and the expression on her face is torn halfway between cautious joy and terror. Buddy feels the breath catch in her chest. 

Vespa stands in front of her, and holds out a hand, palm up. Buddy takes it with lightly trembling fingers, resisting the urge to pull her into an embrace. 

“You’re real?” 

“Yes,” Buddy confirms, and Vespa squeezes her hand tight enough to bruise, leaning in until her head is pressed to Buddy’s shoulder and letting out an audible exhale of relief. 

“Good.” Vespa’s other hand comes up to clutch, white-knuckled, at the lapel of her coat, clinging like a Plutonian limpet on the hull of a starliner. “Don’t scare me like that again.” 

Buddy runs her fingers through the uneven length of her acid-green hair. “I don’t do it on purpose, you know.” 

Vespa grunts, turning so Buddy can make out a sideways glare. “Shut up.” She rests there for another long moment, and then pulls away, looking Buddy up and down and stepping back, a slightly uneasy expression crossing her face. “Bud, I’m seeing blood all over you. Why do I see blood?” 

“Ah.” Buddy clears her throat, and glances at the patchy red stains across her front, already mourning the loss of one of her favorite blouses. “That you are. It’s Ransom’s, darling.”

Vespa settles, visibly relieved. “Oh. That’s fine, then.” She bristles again at whatever she reads into Buddy’s expression. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says, fondly, and then, a little more composed. “Take care of him? For my sake?” 

Vespa stares at her long and hard and more than a little accusatory. “Holy shit. What, did you adopt the kid while I wasn’t looking?” 

“Ms. Vespa, Captain, I hardly think--” Nureyev chimes in, from where he’s still propped against Jet. “That is...I a can take care of myself.” 

“Shut up,” Vespa tells him, and Buddy can hardly hold back a pleased grin. “Jet, medbay. Make up a bed for the kid, and one for Buddy.” 

That wipes the grin away in an instant. “Darling, really now, there’s no need--”

“Of course, Vespa,” Jet agrees, with a solemn nod. “Right away.” 

Buddy crosses her arms. “Honestly, you two, I think I can manage to sit through one paltry little family meeting without immediate medical attention. Scarcely a gaping hole in a vital organ to be found, I’ll have you know, I’m right as rain.” 

Vespa tilts her chin up at an angle that reminds Buddy that despite her wealth of experience in the area of sheer dogged determination, she’s still outmatched for stubbornness in this family. 

It would be easier to put up a fight, probably, if she were a little steadier on her feet. Buddy grits her teeth and makes note of her shaking hands, churning stomach, and the sharp ache still building behind her eyes, blurring her already half-distorted vision. She clears her throat. “Well. I suppose a short rest couldn’t do any harm,” she concedes. 

She doesn’t intend to slip into a doze so abruptly, but it feels rather out of her hands, the minute she sits and lays down her aching head, drowsing between one blink and the next. When she rouses the lights are low, and a parenteral IV is sitting in its usual spot in the crook of one arm. 

In the bed beside her, Peter Nureyev stirs, his eyes catching and reflecting the fluorescent lamp, shining bright in the half-dark. He offers her a hesitant crook of a smile. “Captain.” 

“Well, darling.” She stretches a little of the stiffness from her neck, and carefully readjusts her hair to fall back over the burned portion of her face. “How are you feeling?” 

“Supplied with enough painkillers to tranquilize a seal. I’ve had worse evenings, all told.” He does look to be extraordinarily relaxed into his sprawl on the small cot. And his shoulder is braced in a proper sling, now, and freshly bandaged to boot. But there’s still a tiny flicker of hesitation in his face. “I...Captain Aurinko,” he says, faltering. “About what I said, before--”

“Which part of it?”

Nureyev braces himself. “All of it, I suppose, but the name--my name, I mean. I would...I would greatly appreciate it if...that is to say--”

Buddy interrupts him with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Your secrets are safe with me, Pete.” She clears her throat. “Or Ransom, I suppose, if you’d prefer it.” 

The thief shuts his eyes, gratitude plain in the lines of his face. There’s a pinch to his mouth that speaks to an exhaustion deeper than palliatives can wipe away. “Thank you. That--thank you. Either option is..is alright with me.” 

Buddy sinks back into the pillow on her own cot. “If it’s going to bring any trouble to you or the rest of the crew in the future, darling, I want to know well in advance,” she says. “And I can’t promise to forget about it entirely. It’s a longstanding flaw of mine, you know, I’ve been told I have a mind like a steel trap.” 

“I want you to know,” he says, quickly. “Only I don’t think I’m ready for...for the rest of them, just yet.” Nureyev rolls onto his back, looking away into the half-light. “I’ve gone without the use of that particular name for rather a long time. It’s...difficult, to make the adjustment.” 

“I’m sure it must be.” Buddy rests her eyes. “But what’s a family good for if not knowing entirely too many of your secrets, after all?” 

Nureyev has a curious look on his face the next time she glances over. If she had to put money down on the right way to read his expression she’d bet on surprise, with a heaping helping of curiosity. “You really mean it when you say things like that,” he muses. “That you consider us a family.” 

Buddy feels her mouth twist into a slightly facetious grin. “I never say anything I don’t mean, Pete.”

“I assumed…” he trails off, and his bright eyes dart away again. “But I suppose my experience in that area is more limited than most,” he confesses, wryly. When Buddy turns her head to stare at him, he clears his throat, and clarifies. “Families, I mean. I’m not sure I quite know how to belong to one.” 

“Well, you pick it up quickly enough for a newcomer,” she says. “I wouldn’t worry your pretty head too much, darling. You fit in just fine.” 

The thief is quiet, but out of the corner of her organic eye she can see his lips quirk in a subtle, soft smile. “I’m glad you think so, Captain.”

**Author's Note:**

> BAD THINGS HAPPEN BINGO FILL#4: taking the bullet
> 
> i really stretch these prompts thin on the ground sometimes but i did NOT have a prompt for "feverish hallucinations of the father figure you murdered twenty years ago" OR one titled "bring_him_home_les_miserables.mp3"


End file.
